Andrew Scherer2013-06-18T19:20:53-04:00Andrew Schererhttp://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/author/index.php?author=andrew-schererCopyright 2008, HuffingtonPost.com, Inc.HuffingtonPost Blogger Feed for Andrew SchererGood old fashioned elbow grease.Get Up, Stand Out: How Grads Can Make Themselves Employabletag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.30927852013-04-16T11:36:00-04:002013-06-16T05:12:01-04:00Andrew Schererhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/andrew-scherer/'The Modern Jobs Economy: trends in employment for study leavers'. Issued without fanfare or much attention, this publication offers considerable food for thought for students and graduates considering their first steps onto the career ladder. Addressing the "reality of career options" for the 300,000 soon-to-be graduates preparing to enter an over-crowded job market this summer, the report points out that competition is fiercer than ever, with 5% more young people studying for undergraduate degrees since 2007. At a time when a third of the working age population have a minimum of a graduate degree, students reading this report are justifiably concerned as to how they can better position themselves to secure their dream job.
Luckily, whilst this report offers little in the way of answers, we at Inspiring Interns are keen to offer a more optimistic response to job-hunting graduates out there. Yes, competition is fiercer than ever, and yes, your BA in **INSERT NON-PRACTICAL ARTS SUBJECT HERE** may not mark you out as 'special', but we believe there is an educational, eye-opening, and dare we say it, fun, way to secure the job you have always hoped for. In our opinion, differentiating yourself from the competition comes down to two things: personality and experience. Nope, not cover letters and CVs.
Evidence included in the NUS report certainly highlights this. As they state, the current job market shows that reliance on a degree is not an option anymore: "recruiters are increasingly looking for graduates with previous experience". In fact, 36% of graduate vacancies at the 100 largest graduate employers are filled by applicants who had already worked for that organisation. In some industry sectors the proportion is almost double! So why is work experience the holy grail in finding a job?
The answer probably boils down to the reality that our years at school and university do little to equip us with the knowledge of how to apply our soft skills to a work context. Without experience of the professional world, or indeed a referee willing to attest to your emerging skillset, it can be difficult for businesses to take the leap and hire someone who is something of a blank slate in working terms. Of course some large corporations are able to invest in graduate training schemes that go some way to nullifying this risk, but these cater to only 4% of the graduate population. The fact is, for the thousands of SMEs out there, an applicant without requisite experience is simply too big a financial or HR gamble to take. On top of this, those SMEs ready to take on a graduate often struggle to attract applicants; many students are simply unsure where to look for these opportunities (particularly given careers services' insistence on continuing to push blue chip grad schemes).
With SMEs responsible for 71% of jobs created in 2009-10, how can graduates ensure they get a slice of this employment pie? Well, we believe expert agencies such as Inspiring Interns play a crucial role in bridging this gap through work experience programmes and internships. These agencies provide a meritocratic, and in our case, personality-matching service, to ensure well-suited SMEs and graduates meet each other.
These supported and managed internships offer participants a real experience of an industry of their choice. It provides young people an opportunity to develop the practical skills that go beyond the soft skills learnt in an academic environment, and ultimately position them as a stronger candidate for full-time employment. They also provide a fantastic opportunity for prospective employers to get to know and educate a candidate. The figures speak for themselves: 66% of graduates that come to Inspiring Interns end up with a permanent job at the company where they have interned.
At Inspiring Interns we firmly believe that underemployment of graduates is a major waste of economic capacity and individual potential. The Government should too, having invested millions of pounds in the higher education of thousands of young people. With "nearly 35.9 per cent, or more than one in three recent graduates...[currently] employed in a lower skilled job compared with 26 .7 per cent in 2001" there is clearly an urgent need to help create jobs commensurate to the skills and knowledge of our growing graduate population - something that internships are doing.]]>Youth Unemployment - The Lessons We've Failed to Learntag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.28850542013-03-17T19:00:00-04:002013-05-17T05:12:02-04:00Andrew Schererhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/andrew-scherer/
Whilst I write in hope that these schemes will prove to be more than just a finger in the leaking dam, I remain unconvinced that our government has truly engaged with this issue and considered, in anything other than a blinkered manner, the 'best practice' approach to meeting youth unemployment head on. The stats speak for themselves: apprenticeships do not lead to permanent jobs and the skills they teach are limited. Furthermore, they exclude graduates: a major part of the one million unemployed young people, a part that has been roundly ignored by the government.
The belated shift to promoting these schemes is perhaps well intended, but frankly fails to consider the breadth of options available for the young and unemployed. As the Richard review of apprenticeships states explicitly, "it is wrong to think that the apprenticeship is the only effective form of vocational training".
The manner in which the government is seeking to introduce apprenticeships serves only to polarise the debate, ensuring that young people are either classified as 'apprenticeship' material, or are left to join the ranks of thousands of graduates competing for the grossly limited number of entry-level jobs. What is more, very often, even with the new political support being thrown at them, apprenticeships prove to be an inefficient method of getting people in to fulltime employment. By contrast, internships, free from government restrictions, provide a flexible way to help young people, both graduates and non-graduates alike break into the world of employment, with proven results.
Frankly, the failure of successive governments to come up with innovative solutions (or indeed embrace those being developed by companies driving these new recruitment models) to truly tackle youth unemployment in a holistic manner is one of the biggest blots on our national reputation. The sad truth is they would have only had to look across the waters to our European neighbours to see a better way of dealing with this issue. We stand light-years behind many of our continental friends, who against a backdrop of economic recession, have managed to reduce the number of young people out of work in their country.
Take for example Germany - a country I have written about before. Their employment model has for years been built on a foundation which prioritises work experience for everyone, placing a clear value on the skills gained in these placements and enabling young people to better bridge the gap between education and employment. Integrating work experience into the broader educational experience has worked wonders for them and (as pointed out previously) the facts really do speak for themselves: UK youth unemployment: 20%. Germany: 8.5% (and shrinking - consistently since 2005).
The reality is we continue to have a major youth unemployment problem in this country with an ever-more crowded entry-level job market. With almost a million young people in the UK unemployed, perhaps it is time the government started looking to our neighbours and innovating recruitment sector for tangible solutions to getting graduates into work. We should be recognising the value of proper work experience - not just throwing all our eggs into an apprenticeship basket that is yet to deliver tangible, long-term results.]]>Wurst in Europe? How the UK Can Learn From German Internshipstag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.26303482013-02-06T10:08:29-05:002013-04-08T05:12:01-04:00Andrew Schererhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/andrew-scherer/
I know from first-hand experience how much more advanced Germany's education to employment systems are than ours having spent a year abroad in Munich as part of my degree. Along with perfecting my language skills and sampling the local produce (there are six major breweries in the city to work through), I quickly learnt that gaining practical experience alongside one's studies is not the reserve of eager beavers (or Bereifrigen), it is a prerequisite for all students serious about getting a job after graduation. The effects of this on the employability of young people, and employers' understanding of what graduates can offer them, are stark. A slightly biased teutophile I may be, but the facts speak for themselves. UK youth unemployment: 20%. Germany: 8.5% (and shrinking).
The German approach places a clear value on investing and training young prospective employees and has seen the country develop a nation- and business-wide commitment to helping young adults transition between the role of student and professional. Their system creates a reciprocal relationship between the prospective employee and employer with each party's interests intertwined. It is a system that has a proven track record, and is one that we in Britain should be looking to better emulate to tackle our growing youth unemployment problem.
It is an ethos that underpins the work we do at Inspiring Interns. We believe that proper, supported work experience and internships serve to benefit both employee and employer, giving graduates a chance to gain insight into their industry of choice, and allowing businesses to reap the benefits of investing in their future employees whilst better differentiating between the hundreds of applicants for every job.
Sadly, the internship model is not nearly well established enough in this country and many graduates are forced to pin their hopes on blanket applications to the oversubscribed graduate schemes at major corporations. We at Inspiring Interns are working to shake up Britain's tired approach to youth employment, placing a new value on work experience and highlighting the returns experienced by both young people and their employers when they are properly invested in with training and support.
We think, as with Germany, our track record speaks for ourselves. In the four years since Inspiring Interns was founded, we have placed over 2000 graduates into internships. With 66% of these going to secure full time jobs at their placement company, we can proudly state that we have secured a graduate job a day since our formation. Moreover, these are not the graduate jobs where "who you know" will land you the position, or not having a 2.1 from a top university will exclude you - these are jobs that go to ambitious, motivated jobseekers who are able to demonstrate, beyond a degree classification, that they are the right fit for a company. That is a key facet of proper internships and one that is also not recognised sufficiently in the UK.
The reality is we continue to have a major youth unemployment problem in this country with an ever-more crowded graduate job market. With almost a million young people in the UK unemployed, perhaps it is time we started looking to our neighbours for tangible solutions to getting graduates into work, and recognising the value of proper work experience.]]>Saying No to Nepotismtag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.20559132012-11-01T08:01:29-04:002013-01-01T05:12:01-05:00Andrew Schererhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/andrew-scherer/
Primarily because it is fantastic to see large corporations doing their bit to dispel the divisive and all too pervasive culture of "who you know not what you know" in the recruitment world. In addition, I was also pleased to see the effort they were making to reclaim the internship for what it was intended to be, not what it has become for many businesses.
For too long, internships have been synonymous with exploitation of young graduates keen to get a foothold on their career ladder. Many companies have manipulated the concept of an internship as a means of getting free or cheap labour to cover a company's menial or administrative tasks.
Whilst we at Inspiring Interns have been championing our "good internships" (as I wrote about previously), we are but one company. To have O2 and Bauer Media take a public stance on this issue with their own scheme, will certainly do a lot to set industry-wide standards for internships. Quite simply, it will re-establish that a good internship is about providing a graduate or young person with exposure and experience of a chosen career, whilst giving companies access to the best young talent for their future employment opportunities. Just as Ronan Dunne, CEO of O2 explained, internships are about giving young people real experience, stretching them beyond their academic training and enabling them to identify the existing skills they have to offer a prospective employer. Many of the young people we have placed into internships, have found them an excellent means of moving out of low skill employment and into a career they are passionate about.
Take for example, Lav Jeyarupalingam. After graduating from the University of Nottingham, he wasn't sure what direction he wanted his career to take and ended up falling into low skill employment. As he explains, it was an Inspiring internship that helped him take the next step:
"After working a bit of a mind-numbing job for six months after graduation, I plucked up the courage to leave, only to face unemployment, a depressing thought for anyone. After a little wandering and apathetic applications I realised what I needed to do was to focus in. This is where Inspiring Interns came in. I went into the office to meet them and before I knew it I was getting sent briefs of jobs that all sounded great and had a couple of interviews. After a matter of only a couple of weeks I've landed my current job and I've not looked back, the office is great and I genuinely look forward to coming to work every day."
Beyond this, and another important facet of the work of Inspiring Interns, and now O2 and Bauer Media's new project, is the progression it makes in re-shaping the process by which young people gain work experience. Just as we at Inspiring Interns do, "GoThinkBig" seeks to remove the nepotism involved in securing work experience and replace it with a fair and meritocratic system. Our recruitment process works to find the best graduates who offer the best fit with the placements on offer, whether that requires academic brilliance, excellent people skills or technical abilities.
With more graduates than ever looking to kick start their careers, we at Inspiring Interns are incredibly excited to see what becomes of O2 and Bauer Media's "GoThinkBig" initiative. Whilst we wait to see the impact it has, we will continue offering our own "good internships" to the best candidates, securing full time employment at the point of placement for 67% of the young people we have placed.]]>A 'Good Internship' - Setting New Standardstag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.19358452012-10-03T11:17:52-04:002012-12-03T05:12:02-05:00Andrew Schererhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/andrew-scherer/
The facts are straightforward. 66% of graduates that come to Inspiring Interns end up with a job directly with the company that their placement was with. A job that on average pays £1500 more in the first year than the salaries earned by graduates who have not done an internship.
A job that isn't 'whatever they could find', and is instead a first step on their dream career ladder. Graduates take part in a placement that provides them with valuable experience and insight into their chosen industry, and doesn't prevent them from claiming the allowances they are due whilst taking part in an internship. Yes, you heard right, internships do not prevent graduates from claiming Job Seekers' Allowance, which is rarely mentioned by those saying only the well off can afford an unpaid placement.
So why all the criticism? Well the truth is, all too often companies run internships with the sole aim of generating free labour and exploiting both the willingness of graduates and the saturated job market. There is such a thing as a 'bad internship'. But that does not mean there is no such thing as a 'good internship'. My concern at the moment is that we are allowing the criticisms of 'bad internships' to cloud the valuable and formative experience provided by 'good internships'.
So what exactly is a 'good internship'? For Inspiring Interns, a 'good internship' is:
Meritocratic: We aim to remove the 'it's not what you know, but who you know' attitude to graduate employment. Getting an internship should be about matching you to the company that suits you, your skills, and your ambitions. We're not just talking about academic results, but about character, personality and drive. We want to give as many graduates as possible the chance to put themselves forward for our roles. It's obvious; an intern who fits within a company is more likely to secure long-term employment from them.
Practical and insightful: There is no point doing an internship if you are stuck photocopying and/or making tea all day. An internship should offer a real experience of the industry of your choice, giving you the practical skills that go beyond the soft skills learnt in an academic environment. Ultimately an internship should make you a stronger candidate for full-time employment.
Properly managed: Too often interns are left aimlessly floating between tasks throughout their placement at a company. To ensure you are getting the most out of your internship, Inspiring Interns believe you should have a clear, structured and tailor-made program that ensures the internship provides value to both you and the company you are placed with.
Supported: Inspiring Interns believe no one should be forced to give up their Job Seekers' Allowance whilst completing an internship. We have fought hard to ensure all interns we place are able to claim this vital financial support whilst they build their CV.
So there you have it, these are the qualities that drive the work we at Inspiring Interns do. With more graduates than ever, and only 4% of them securing places on the leading graduate recruitment schemes, 'good internships' are an excellent way of entering your career of choice.
As a company, we join those criticising the 'bad internships'. Our aim is to set a new standard for 'good internships' and help get more graduates bridge the gap between university and their dream first job. While many continue to berate internships on a blanket level, quite simply there are thousands of people in jobs as a result of 'good internships'. I'm one of them, and I'm proud to be helping others to do the same.]]>